Not inspiring much confidence with this list. one comment from a coach who will remain nameless: it’s a bunch of SWAs (Senior Woman Administrator) who are trying to pad their resume so it leads to being on a better committee, like basketball.

The way you can look at it is there are very few reps or regions west of the mississippi, which would lead to the bias given Big Ten and Big 12. And no one who would really be paying attention at their school to the national picture IMHO.

NCAA vball needs to start seeding all 64 teams like men’s bball, and not just 16. That way top teams like USC, Nebraska, etc.. Would never meet early. I love vball, but tournament is a joke every year due to comittee. MVC conference, please!

Nebraska loses badly to Northwestern Saturday and still retains no. 2 seed. the RPI they were supposed to use dropped the huskers to 4. Arizona’s loss to ASU didn’t keep Wildcats out of at-large. Rubio told Shoji before the selection show he thought that the loss would keep them out.

i’m gonna disagree on this one. Nebraska was always gonna get a top 4 seed. in fact, i think they were headed for an overall #1 seed, before the loss to Northwestern. I think the loss dropped them from #1 to #2.

If Neb hadn’t lost, then we might have seen Texas in the Hawaii regional instead. If that happened, then I think the brackets would have looked just a touch more balanced (not completely, just a touch). I think Texas is slightly overrated this year, with a lot of the Big 12 teams getting an RPI boost.

Ironically, I think the Big 12 got a boost from Nebraska leaving the conference. One less team to play (leaving only 16 conference matches), results in one more weekend free for the Big 12 teams to schedule more non-conference matches to help boost their RPI.

Hawaii’s RPI this year was the highest it’s been in years. With Boise St departing the WAC this season, that meant only 14 regular season matches, instead of 16 last year. It freed up Shoji to schedule another team to help build Hawaii’s RPI.

Compare that with the PAC-12 who gained 2 RPI poor teams in Utah and Colorado. They have a 22-match round robin regular season, leaving the PAC-12 teams with even fewer opportunities to play non-conference matches. And we saw this season that the overall RPI of the conference drop.

Just goes to show, the RPI can be gamed, but you need room/flexibility on your team’s schedule to do it.

I didn’t even watch the tournament last year when the committee paved the way for psu to get to the final four so easily. Think only “ranked” team psu faced before final four was duke. I love the acc for men’s bball, but for vball, it’s a joke

As long as there’s the four hundred mile travel rule they will not seed the sixty-four teams. It would be impossible to assign teams to each region with that constraint. Interestin that the AVCA has remained silent all these years.

Just spent 15 min on the ticket site checking to see how many sections still had available seats are looks like the entire lower bowl might be gone also many of the upper sections along the side court are coming back no seats available..

That’s crazy how coordinated USU is. Looks like a lot of fun. Must have taken at least a season to build that up though. I think our “Let’s go ‘bows!” chant is pretty effective, just sucks when random students don’t understand that it’s not a speed kind of cheer.

The cheerleaders are pretty good with getting students to participate and do coordinated cheers/motions after each Hawaii point. It doesn’t work well when there aren’t a lot of them there though.

I wish I had a Selection Committee to help me pick the top Cyber Monday sites. But I can see that Committee pushing Lowes.com over HomeDepot.com (after all, who sponsored the Volleyball CLASS Award? hint: it wasn’t Home Despot) or pushing Walmart.com because they gave the most money to a certain political party.

Oh well, to mix metaphors, you have to play the hand and you were dealt, not the cards you wish you had. Wishful thinking gets you nowhere. Except I wish the HOUSE wins, in this case OUR HOUSE. Go Bows!

thanks for sharing that excellent article; i hope it opened some eyes but my cynical side fears that it was just a blip on the radar and that nothing will change… Like others have noted, like it or not, we have to deal with the cards we’ve been dealt….. Go Bows!!!

IT occurred to me last night while i was fuming ’bout the seedings (it’s amazing but should be no surprise how they mess it up every year). Re-seed the Cloud looking for a Silver Lining: and Coach Shoji noted it on the BC Show this morning:

Whoever makes it out of the third and fourth rounds in Hawai’i, with potentially this past week’s AVCA Nos. 1, 2, 3 & 10 here is a good shot to win it all @ San Antonio Final Four — The REAL Final Four seems to be in Hawai’i … IF i had to choose to face USC & Nebraska — You got to Beat ‘Em All Any Way to Win National Championship — Better here than anywhere else …

I don’t think the 100 ticket thing was publicized enough, good for me though, the line was short when I got there that morning. It also might be that the people running the ticket booths don’t know, one guy tried to charge my friend $7 for one night before I stepped in about the free tickets. We were the 2nd and 3rd students in line too

and there were problems with the free tickets. first guy in line told it hadn’t been approved. I went down and spoke with a UH administrator who called up. seemed like it got taken care of fairly quickly.

As someone said, spoken by someone who got to host when unseeded. Can honestly say in all my years of traveling with volleyball, CSU was probably the poorest host site I’ve been to in terms of treating the media.

The political power of the Big Ten(Ohio State) and the Big 12(Texas) is immense. Selection committee members seek to please the prevailing NCAA administrators to gain favors and perks in the future. Are the Pac-12 and MWC criminally ignored? No, but they are slighted.
As for the seedings and regions, it is designed to avoid too much Far West representation in the Final Four. Of course, outside Penn State, Nebraska, and Texas, everybody knows where the greatest volleyball teams play.
As for the Rainbows, they’ve been the number one team in my Top 40 power ranking blog for several weeks (found at http://thewwwesterlies.blogspot.com).

interesting LC. Can tell you that it is doubtful Texas will be invited back to a tournament at the SSC as long as Shoji is the coach. (not from this comment). It was said after Texas was here a few years ago.